CRICKET - Ups and downs part of cricket: Parlane

Northern Knights most experienced batsman Michael Parlane says going from hero to zero is just part of playing cricket these days.
Just a few short weeks after celebrating winning up the State Shield one-day title, the Knights collected the wooden spoon in the State Twenty20 competition after a seven-wicket drubbing by Wellington at Mount Maunganui on Saturday.
"Twenty20 is a vastly different game to 50-over cricket... it's less forgiving, if you get a portion of the game wrong in Twenty20, you get pumped," he said.
The Knights lost nine of their 10 games in the series, with the other match against Otago washed out.
"Cricket's a funny game if it's not going your way it can look pretty bad, people don't mean to drop catches or play bad shots it's just the nature of the game unfortunately."
Parlane said the team had talked about what they were doing wrong in the series but were unable to stop the rot once they started losing.
"We can't make any excuses, we played poorly," he said.
"I could start spouting out all the cliches but at the end of the day we just weren't up to scratch in enough departments of our game."
Parlane is just keen to put the experience behind him and is looking forward to returning to the longer form of the game.
"I'm hitting the ball as well as I've ever hit it at the moment but I haven't found a way to get the big scores," he said.
"It's been a long two months playing limited overs cricket and now we have the chance to get out there and bat for a long time, without the pressure of scoring quick runs."
Knights coach Grant Bradburn has given his players a week off to recover from their recent mauling. They will assemble for a camp in Whangarei next week, before restarting their State Championship campaign at Cobham Oval against Auckland on March 6.
But before returning to first-class cricket for Northern Districts, Parlane will be one of three Knights players confirmed to appear for Northland in their Hawke Cup challenge in Napier this weekend.
"They'll have a fantastic bowling attack so it'll be a good challenge for us, I think around seven or eight of them will have played first class cricket recently," he said.
Parlane will join the Northland team in Napier on Friday, before they begin their Hawke Cup challenge at Nelson Park.